Pierre Gilliard

Pierre Gilliard (16 May 1879-30 May 1962) was a Swiss academic and author who served as the French language tutor to the children of Czar Nicholas II of Russia and Czarina Alix of Hesse from 1905 to 1918.

Biography
Pierre Gilliard was born in Vaud, Switzerland in 1879, and he came to Russia in 1904 as a French tutor to a relative of the House of Romanov. In 1905, he was recommended to Czar Nicholas II of Russia, who hired Gilliard to tutor his daughters Olga and Tatiana in 1905. He grew fond of the family and remained with them during their exile in Tobolsk following the February Revolution of 1917, but the Bolsheviks prevented Gilliard from joining the Czar's children when they were moved to the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg in May 1918. He remained in Siberia after the murders of the family, and he married a Russian nurse in 1919. Gilliard returned to Switzerland in 1920 and became a professor at the University of Lausanne; in 1925, he investigated the case of Anna Anderson, who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia; while he had compassion for Anderson, he decided that she was not the princess, who had been murdered along with the rest of her family in 1918. Gilliard was severely injured in a 1958 car crash, and he died in 1962 at the age of 83.